Using Agendas and GTD

Also known as: Getting Things Done By Pushing Upwards

There have been a number of questions lately on both the GTD Forums and the Yahoo e-mail group about how to use the Agendas (or @Agendas  for the Outlook users out there) category.  I have been using the Agendas category for about a year now, and I think I’ve got this down to a way that works for me.  Your mileage may vary.

This is something that is suggested in David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done” , but it seems to stymie many people.  The idea is that you keep a list of the people you communicate with regularly, and thereby keep a list of what you need to talk to them about – those pending things that other people have agreed to, that need to follow-up on and cover in future conversations with different people, that you need approval on, etc.

I’ve found that the Palm format, and Palm Desktop, is very flexible to dealing with Agendas.  All I’ve done is made a separate category under my tasks list for Agendas, in which I list each person I deal with regularly – either someone I task things down to, or someone I’m waiting for approval from before moving on.  I use the note section of the individual person’s “task” to act as the agenda, and record what it is I need to speak to them about or what I’m waiting for from them.  When I have them on the phone or in my office, I reach for the laptop or grab my Palm, and ensure that we are covering everything.  

It is remarkably effective.  I have far fewer of those moments where I hang up the phone and immediately think of three other things I meant to talkd to them about.  Being outside of our head office and therefore away from our executive core, I can make a record of what needs to be discussed or what I am waiting for their approval on.

This is really helping me “push things upwards”, ensuring that no timelines get missed, that directions discussed don’t get pushed aside – to ensure that our business is going forward in a tangible, dramatic way.  It is such a small, but dramatic, tool, and one that anyone can benefit from using.  This is how I’ve implemented it – I would appreciate anyone’s comments on how they have done the same.

As an aside, during some of the discussions I’ve learned that there is some functionality in the Palm Desktop software that isn’t in Outlook – namely, the ability to have different categories for each “application” – Calendar, Tasks, Memos, etc.  I have always used Palm Desktop, so I could not understand the constant need for people to put @ in front of their categories - @ being a context delimiter.  There was no need, in my mind, to have @Agendas, or @Someday/Maybe.  I always read those as “At Someday/Maybe”.  It turns out that Outllook only has one set of categories that are global for all of the portions of the program – Calendar, Tasks, etc.  So the @ symbol helps them to be sorted to the top of the list.  Now my confusion is resolved.

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GTD Connect - Final Thoughts

I have decided that Connect is not worth it. Not yet anyway. I was very excited about Connect, but taking an objective 2-month look at it, using nearly every day, I don’t think that in the long run it is worth my money at this point. Of course, as always: your mileage may vary

There is not a lot of new material, although there is some. There are interviews with various GTD “luminaries”, folks who are in high-profile positions and use GTD. There are some additional, and sporadically participated in, forums. Certinaly, the public forums are much busier. However, here are my main reasons for leaving:

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1. Most of the content is old, although it is not stale.

Once you have downloaded the PDFs and podcasts, and once you have posted in a couple of forums, there isn’t a lot there that is new. A lot of what is there for download is from the 9-or-so month beta period. Once you’ve caught up, well, there isn’t much left to do on the site.

2. New content isn’t posted as frequently as $48.00USD would lead you to expect.

For that price, I was expecting new major content every week (podcasts, etc.), and new minor content (articles) every day or two. You would think that there would be at least something new every week. It seems like there is something perhaps every 4-5 weeks – new interviews with a “luminary”, new TechGTD interviews with a “luminary” from the high-tech world, etc. However, these come at intervals that are far apart from what one would expect for $48USD per month.

3. Truly, $48USD per year would be a reasonable amount for what I have seen at Connect.

The idea of Connect is great. The reality is that, as an early adopter, you are like anything, paying for being on the leading edge by having to make some stuff up as you go along – like making up that there is a lot in Connect for your $48. As I said above, there are new podcasts every 4-5 weeks, but if you look at Merlin Mann's 43 Folders Podcast and The Cranky Middle Manager, you get that now, if not more often, and you get it free. Everything else is on the site is kind of fluffy.

4. GTD Connect doesn’t seem to have a focus on what it is trying to do.

Clearly, GTD Connect is trying to ensure that folks who want a way to reach out and speak to the folks at The David Allen Company have a way to do so. They are trying to ensure that you have a way to reach David, and trying to ensure that those who feel they need to avail themselves of some kind of contact below a coaching level can do so. To be fair to both sides in this debate, they are also trying to ensure that Davidco has a pretty steady stream of income – which is just fine in my opinion, as Allen and his folks have every right to make money off of his ideas. Hell, the book has sold several hundred thousand copies, so he’s kind of done that already, but this is for the select few that want more. Good for them for doing it.

The problem is that Connect doesn’t seem to have an idea about what it really wants to do. It wants to reach out to folks, but is using a shotgun approach – new articles (which used to be free newsletter articles from Davidco), new podcasts (which were never available before, admittedly) interviews, etc., etc. But nothing that really gives a feeling of focus – something I think everyone that uses GTD is really, truly looking for.

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Because of these reasons, I’d decided to lapse my membership. Perhaps in a year or so I will get wistful, think it was a great idea, and join again to see what it is like, but probably not. There just isn’t enough in there for me. As with anything, your mileage may vary.

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Scanning your contacts list.

For nearly a year, I've had a remarkable piece of technology that not enough people know about - the Cardscan Business Card Scanner (Cardscan was formerly called Corex). They have a variety of products, including an updated version of their software since I bought my unit. However, in comparison to the other products on the market, the Cardscan scanner (no matter the flavour) is outstanding.

I started out wanting to get what I figured was over 300 contacts into my Palm Tungsten E. Impatient as I am, I went out to Staples and picked up the Targus Mini Business Card Scanner. I found that the scanner unit worked fine, but the kicker – the software – was lacking, at best. The software was very poor on recognition, very slow, and while it did transfer to Palm Desktop well, the OCR was very low – perhaps 65% accuracy.

Frustrated, I started to think there must be something better out there, so I downloaded a copy of Cardscan’s v6.x software for demo, from their website. The accuracy was astounding when compared side-by-side with the Targus software (Newsoft Inc.’s Presto! Bizcard 5 – just as well, as the use of “Biz” is a scourge in itself). I immediately ordered the Cardscan Executive (note that the link shows the new version), and it arrived soon enough. What a great combination of hardware and software.

The colour scanner is fast, efficient, and rarely has a problem – usually with thicker cards. The cards feed in landscape mode, making scanning quick, and you can scan multiple cards at a time (I normally do up to 20) before it starts the recognition processing. While this can take a while due to the complexity, it is certainly quick enough – I normally do the scanning when on a conference call or when I am also processing something mindless.

To put it to the test, I recently brought it to a conference where our company received over 200 cards to process. It made very short work of them. For the next one, I would like to try Cardscan’s Lead Qualifier, which is designed for use at trade shows like the one I was at.

I would be very wary of anything that bundles with the Newsoft Inc. software. However, the Cardscan products are wonderful pieces of software and hardware technology, and are highly recommended.

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